Early results from the Irish referendum suggest that it’ll be time to go back to the drawing board. Hm.
Update: Comments in P’s thread.

In which we discuss the European Union Treaty of Lisbon, due to come into force in 2009. Irish state broadcaster RTE is sticking to its earlier prediction (based on the Irish specialty of “tallymen” who watch the ballots as they are being sorted) that the Treaty has been rejected. See RTE news updates [...]

One thought: Probably the first true upset of the tournament with Croatia’s win. Germany looked strangely like England against them. It means that Austria’s final match will matter a lot despite its likely irrelevance to Austria’s prospects.

Unexpected good news from Serbia: police have picked up Stojan Zupljanin, one of the four remaining war crimes suspects still at large.
Zupljanin is a pretty good catch. He was a medium-big fish: a police administrator in Yugoslav times, he became head of all police in the Serb part of Bosnia. He was deeply [...]

So Romania’s economy grew by about 8% in the first quarter of this year.
To put this in context: Romania has been growing at a rate of around 6% per year nonstop since 1999. So — on paper at least — its economy has nearly doubled in size since then.
And you can see it. Bucharest [...]

Henry of Crooked Timber, whom I know from way back, is in Ireland and has written up how the country’s referendum on the Lisbon Treaty looks the day before voting. There’s also a more academic version, for those inclined.
I hope that it will be a moot point, but I’m curious about how things would work [...]

Sadly, No reads Anne Applebaum so you don’t have to. Hijinks ensue.

Read more… or Read more right here… »

Quoth Clif:
What people on the street in Poland (or elsewhere) think of Obama because he’s black isn’t [...]

One thought from the first match: qualification form seems to matter. Russia scraped into the tournament. They had some nice touches but the gulf in quality showed. Would England have been picked apart the same way?

Lest we be accused of running an all-football blog in June, let’s pause to briefly take note of the fact that George Bush is on the continent at the moment, beginning in Ljubljana (and a little unsteady on his feet?) for the EU-US annual summit before going to Rome, Berlin, Paris, London, and Belfast.  One [...]

That has to be the theme from Les Bleus following yet another slow start to the group stages of a tournament — such a start a couple of years ago not precluding an eventual run to the final.  Since there will be more attention on Raymond Domenech’s starting selections: Anelka?  The man who somehow dodged [...]